and all the lines we cast will bring us home
by glitteratiglue
Summary: Finding yourself is a little like losing yourself in the process: he would know. Post-TWS.


**A/N: M for brief mention of violence, sexual content.**

* * *

His eyelids stir, and for one terrible second he is back in the place where everything hurts.

It isn't the bank vault, he's sure of that - the room has clear glass walls, and the tech he's hooked up to looks far more advanced than what he's used to - but he has no memory of this place.

Finding his arms restrained at his sides, he panics. They got to him; they must have. He remembers the empty warehouse, the pain of his broken arm after he tried to set it himself, the days where he shook from fever - then, darkness.

He thought he would die there; he wishes he had. His metal arm breaks his bonds with ease and he swipes at the monitoring equipment, sending it crashing to the floor.

"Where am I?" he asks, his throat sore.

"You're safe," says a familiar voice, and there he is: the man from the bridge, wearing a tentative smile.

His mind tells him that man is the mission, and he should not believe anything the mission says.

Yanking the other restraint away, he tries to make it to the door, but he's blocked by an arsenal of black-booted thugs with guns and calculates that in his weakened state, he won't be able to overpower them.

"We need backup, now!" a female voice is saying, somewhere he can't see. "And you need to get out of here, Rogers. We don't know how the patient will react to your presence."

The name stirs something inside him, like the face. There's a sudden knife-sharp sensation in his chest and he can't breathe, there's no air, at least none he can suck into his lungs, then the sting of something against his neck -

then, nothing.

* * *

They tell him he was found by local police, unconscious in an old warehouse on the outskirts of Baltimore, half-dead from blood poisoning. It hardly registers - his mind is hazy at best.

He limped away from the banks of the Potomac and later found a newspaper in a trash can that told him Pierce was dead and HYDRA's presence at the heart of S.H.I.E.L.D had been exposed.

The adrenaline kept him going as far as a different city - he had the layout of Baltimore in his head, probably from some other mission - and it was easy enough to steal a vehicle. At first, he had a purpose: to get away from the pain, the torture that would surely follow after failing his mission so completely. He had thought to get to one of the abandoned HYDRA safe houses, but his injuries were worse than he thought and it wasn't an option.

If his treachery had been uncovered, there would have been consequences, but he feels no relief at knowing Pierce is gone. The man was good to him, when he deserved it, when he did what an Asset was supposed to do. He always knew there was a darker purpose behind those good deeds, but he craved them, just the same.

Mostly, he sleeps. There are swarms of doctors to monitor him, and drugs to cloud his mind and bring blissful oblivion.

(Even on the drugs, he still dreams of the cold, cold darkness of the cryochamber).

After a week, they allow him short periods without restraints as a reward for co-operation. He is still virtually catatonic, no threat to anyone until someone says the wrong thing - and he's learning that the wrong thing can be anything.

"I'm sorry," he tells the young technician who comes to check his vitals, indicating the sling on her arm, a reminder of the last time he couldn't control himself.

She smiles, but he sees her flinch, the way she is careful to stay as far away from him as possible while she examines the monitors.

They all look at him that way, except for the man who comes and sits by his bed when he is asleep (or pretending to be; sometimes it's easier that way).

His mission.

No, Steve. _Steve._

An image flashes into his mind of the man lying on the riverbank, a body punctured with bullet holes and a face blooming with bruises from a metal fist: from him.

He will not think of Steve, because to think of him means pain.

(They made him forget almost everything, but his brain always remembers its conditioned response to words he is not supposed to think of.)

* * *

Over the coming weeks - at least, he assumes weeks, given that time has never been exactly linear for him - there are more 'incidents', as the psychological division of this facility so delicately calls them.

(That does not surprise him. He is a weapon, nothing more).

They bring him clothes, and ask him to choose -– shirt or t-shirt, blue or grey or red –- and humiliatingly, he _can't_. _  
_

He turns away from them and presses his head into the pillow, wishing for his stiff, uncomfortable combat gear.

* * *

The red-haired woman visits; she tells him to call her Natalia, perhaps to make him more comfortable around her (which he does, until he notices that the others calls her Natasha and he doesn't want to be different from them).

There is no unpleasant reaction to her, only neutrality - he suspects that has something to do with the fact that she was trained under a red star, like him. It is an alien response - he is used to either blinding hatred for a target or sycophantic loyalty to his keepers - and he doesn't know what to do with it.

He likes talking to her; she is the only one who speaks Russian to him. They often talk politics, and it's a subject he can at least hold his own in, owing to the masses of information his handlers would force him to assimilate about current events and updates in the world whenever he was woken for a mission. They would question him, and if he didn't remember, there was pain.

"Do you remember how you became this way?" she asks one day.

Shaking his head, he tells her, "Not exactly. I - fell, and then I don't remember much after that. They gave me the metal arm and then I slept somewhere dark and cold for the longest time. Then they put me in the ice, and I think they started using the machine to make me forget." He sighs, dissatisfied with the disjointed, childlike nature of his explanation, but in this moment, he has no other words to tell her.

Natasha's fingers find the palm of his flesh hand and he grips her hand tight, some of the tension bleeding out of him already.

He thinks about Odessa and the scar he left on her skin, and the cold horror he felt two weeks ago when she lifted up her shirt and showed him, and knows he doesn't deserve this kindness.

"You know, sometimes I have trouble remembering how I became this way," she says with a wry smile.

They've talked about the Red Room once or twice - he still doesn't recall much about the time he spent training her, but the way her hair smelled, the way her pale skin bruised purple after they sparred: he remembers that part.

(He read Natalia Alianovna Romanova's file once, for the mission: he knows what the Russians did to those girls - the Black Widows - and it made for stomach-turning reading, even for him. Yet here she is, whole and smiling, and it gives him hope.)

* * *

In time, he begins to control his outbursts - he cannot always stop them from happening, but he manages to limit their severity. Having to regulate himself is not an impulse he is used to; someone always did that for him.

Always, though, there is rage battling to escape, a hair's breadth from the surface.

(Sometimes it frightens him so much that he dares not even move an inch for fear he will let his conditioning take over).

His thoughts swirl. There are newspapers and books left for him both in English and in Russian, but after a page or so he gives up, frustrated at the way his mind will not focus on the words.

Food is difficult - in the dark places he was kept, he was fed intravenously for maximum efficiency and his body revolts against any attempt to change that. Whether it's the bland food from his own time or anything more modern, it doesn't matter; he gags and vomits, angry that his own body has learned to reject something so human.

The doctors start to talk to him. They show him pictures of a World War Two unit called the _Howling Commandos_ , and he sees his own face looking back at him. He is young and smiling, and standing next to the man from the bridge -– no, not the man, he has a name: Steve. He has learned to say the name in his head even if he can't quite say it out loud.

He hasn't seen him in the longest time - likely, the medical staff have warned him to keep his distance - and is surprised to find that he actually _wants_ to.

(The image of that carefree young man who wears his face occupies his nightmares for weeks).

* * *

"Thank you, Bucky," Steve says when he finally visits.

"For what, Steve?"

(Now, Bucky can at least say that name without the knife-sharp burst of pain in his temples. The part he struggles with is his own name; he has just about gotten used to James Buchanan Barnes, but thinking of himself as Bucky is harder. For Steve though, he wants to try.)

"For remembering." Steve's face is tight with pain, and though Bucky can't explain it, it hurts him too, somewhere under his skin in all those lonely places inside him.

"Don't." His metal fingers flex, fighting against their preconditioned responses - but it's more than that, because he knows he doesn't deserve his thanks. His memories of Steve are still clouded, as if his unsteady brain has locked them away, but the memory of almost killing him is one he hasn't been able to put out of his mind.

There's a sad smile on Steve's face as he turns to leave.

Steve starts to visit more, and Bucky likes that; there is an easy familiarity to their relationship that makes everything seem a little less confusing when he's there.

One aspect HYDRA neglected to keep their asset abreast of was pop culture, and Steve's frequent visits do a good job of filling in the blanks. They listen to music - Bucky still isn't sure about Nirvana, but he doesn't mind Elton John and Marvin Gaye - and sometimes play video games.

Often he can see Steve watching him with such sadness that it pulls at the space inside his heart - the numb, gaping space that's empty of all those memories that should be there - and makes him frustrated at everything he doesn't know.

Bucky hasn't cried since he can remember - that was one of the _bad_ things that would mean punishment - but when he thinks of Steve, he wishes he could.

* * *

Bucky is moved to his own living quarters, behind a door in a glass-and-chrome corridor in the bowels of Stark's complex: he knows they cannot risk him escaping, even with all the progress he has made.

He's talking, keeping down most of his meals, and not displaying violent impulses - it's a start.

It is a prison of a different sort, but at least a cell with some freedom to come and go as he pleases - far better than he ever expected. He is dimly grateful to Stark and the others for taking him in, and for keeping most of the Winter Soldier details out of the press, especially when he considers that he was responsible for the death of the man's parents.

Stark has never been to see him, and he doesn't expect he will (he hopes he doesn't). Many of Bucky's memories are still lost, but he remembers the Stark mission from 1991, the way the car veered off the road and the crunch of the impact while he watched from the shadows.

The thought of outside frightens him; he is glad that is not an option right now.

His first night, the bed is too soft and the blanket too warm; he's still a soldier, after all and sleeping in a bed feels strange. It takes a while to get used to sleeping more than an hour or two at a time, or to feel as though he deserves to. When he was out of stasis for longer than a day, his handlers would wake him constantly at night while he slept, to remind him that he was a weapon and that he was _theirs_.

The doctors still come and talk to him every day, to help him remember and process what he recalls. Sometimes it is easy, and more often than not, it isn't - memory is a complicated thing, they say, and he needs to give it time.

(Time is all he has in this new world where he has no purpose.)

In time, he sleeps deeper and longer, and with restful sleep comes new dreams. His slumber throws up images - the smell of fish in the dock air that clung to his skin even after he got off shift, and taking girls out to dance, their bright skirts swishing with each step while he twirled them around.

Then another, more potent memory comes.

 _There are salt-bleached planks under his feet, and the air smells like hot dogs and popcorn: it's the boardwalk at Coney Island, and beside him is Steve, putting on a brave face even though he's walking slowly with a tight chest from all the secondhand cigarette smoke._

 _"The rollercoaster, next, Buck?" Steve is saying, in that slow, steady calm way that lets his friend know that there's agony between each deep-drawn breath (not that he would ever say anything)._

 _Bucky gives Steve his best don't-even-try-it look, and Steve laughs a wheezy laugh._

 _"You're funny, you know that, kid?" says Bucky, giving Steve's side a gentle shove._

 _"An asthmatic and soon-to-be-soldier who's afraid of heights. We make a pair." Steve is grinning that little punk grin of his, the one that's annoying but also makes Bucky want to ruffle his hair at the same time. And then Bucky thinks about his imminent army medical, and how they both know Steve is never going to make the cut, but they don't talk about it, and throws an arm around him casually._

 _"I am not afraid of -"_

 _"Yeah, yeah," Steve interjects, giving him a playful punch on the arm. "At least you weren't the one who threw up last time we rode it." They break apart and keep strolling down the boardwalk - all the way, Bucky tries to not look at how much Steve is smiling to himself._

The memory is like being woken from a long, satisfying sleep - not the waking nightmare of the cryo tube - and light is streaming through the windows, and there are tears on his cheeks, because he _remembers_ Steve.

He starts to realise why his captors feared leaving him out of the ice too long: they were never able to take everything from him.

* * *

It's like his mind has opened the floodgates: what he finds it hard to remember during the day instead comes back to him at night.

It isn't all good: alongside all the better parts of himself he remembers come the horrors. He dreams of himself as a weapon of war, a bringer of quiet death with guns and knives and silencers.

There were so many places, but his brain focuses on one: a city, somewhere far away where glass towers reached towards the burning sun and he was so hot in his black tactical gear he thought he would pass out. It was beautiful, he remembers, thinking of palm trees and still, clear water. Staring down the sight of a rifle, he focuses in on a smiling couple, dancing in their living room. They are happy, and for a moment, it makes him ache just a little. He watches them for a long time before he presses the trigger - once, twice, then, nothing.

After that, he never made the mistake of caring again.

He said nothing about this small moment of weakness, but his handlers knew - they always knew everything - and the pain went on for hours. When they finally got done with him and he lay curled up on the filthy floor, every part of him hurting, there was Alexander Pierce. He sees Pierce's dream self leaning down, speaking softly to him with a gentle hand around his shoulders.

Bucky wakes with a throat raw from screaming; he barely manages to stumble to the bathroom and vomit up the contents of his stomach.

This much he knows: he is the Asset, and he is also Bucky Barnes, and remembering that he is either of those things hurts so much he feels he will hardly bear it. But he will, because forgetting is so much worse: he would know.

* * *

Steve invites him over to his place for a drink, and Bucky's terrified. He's made it outside a few times, to the grocery store, and once for a movie with Natasha (it was too loud, and halfway through, he had to go out and stand in the alley behind the theatre, leaning against the wall while his hands shook), but this is different.

Thankfully, Steve seems to know that and shows up to give him a ride. His friend Sam he shares the apartment with is out tonight and it's quiet, because his friend remembers that sometimes, he can't handle much noise; there's sudden warmth in Bucky's chest at knowing Steve has thought about his needs.

They sink most of a bottle of whiskey, squashed up on Steve's rickety old couch - apparently, a gift from Sam after the veteran's group didn't need it anymore - before Bucky realises it's having no effect on him. He can't recall the last time he had an intoxicant, unless it was the drugs that his handlers would pump into him to ensure he would not fatigue during a long mission.

"It doesn't work on guys like us," says Steve, appearing to read his mind. "Something about metabolism. I know a guy who can get hold of something a bit stronger, but he's not exactly easy to contact, given that he lives on another world." Seeing his friend's expression, Steve adds, "I'll get to that."

There's a lot about this new world Bucky inhabits that he doesn't entirely understand: the information about the Battle of New York and the Avengers was included in his mission updates, but he'd never thought to pay it much thought; his only focus was what he had been programmed to do. He and Steve had both been on ice, and apparently now there were gods in realms above the sky; the world had gone mad.

Though the alcohol isn't affecting him, it's still a pleasant taste, spicy and sharp on his tongue. Draining the last of his glass, he thinks of long ago, of toasting victory in a broken-down bar with his best friend, both of them not knowing what was to come; it aches, the memory pulling at him somewhere deep inside.

"Do you ever think about the old days? The Howling Commandos?" Bucky asks carefully, running a finger around the rim of his empty glass before he puts it on the table.

Steve leans back, sinking into the couch cushions. "Sure. Some days it's all I can think of. I missed everything." He looks away, uncomfortable. "But so did you."

Bucky clenches and unclenches his metal fist, the familiar whir startling in the silence of the room. "I remember the Cold War. That was a weird time to be working behind the Iron Curtain." He'd been woken many times throughout that conflict, to be a gun for hire and pick off key figures who showed opposition to the Politburo, and more rarely, enemies of the state; it had only recently come back to him. Understanding the role he'd played in world conflicts was overwhelming at times, and he still found it hard to accept.

"Bucky?" A mask comes down over Steve's eyes; it obviously isn't the first time he's called his name and there's quiet frustration in his eyes, that look he tries to keep hidden, the one that just wants the old Bucky back rather than trying to understand this new one.

Blinking, Bucky tries to focus on his friend's face, but his head is starting to pound - the familiar response to memories he doesn't want to think about - and he looks down to see his metal fist pushed deep into the couch cushions, on the verge of tearing a hole in the fabric. He pulls it back, shaking his head.

"I know," says Steve, gently. "It used to happen to me all the time after I was taken from the ice. There was so much, and everything was overwhelming. I struggled to filter out the white noise, to concentrate on what was important."

"Did it get easier?"

"More or less." There's something sad in Steve's easy smile - he gives it freely, but there's the sense that it costs him something every time; a world away from the friend that Bucky once knew.

"I can't ever relax," Bucky admits flatly, looking down at his knees. "I sleep badly. I'm always on alert, waiting for something to happen. I'm a - soldier."

Though Bucky feels he's done a woeful job of trying to explain his feelings, Steve nods in apparent understanding; in the split second he does, there's something just behind his eyes, wide-eyed horror that makes something twist low in Bucky's stomach.

"We won the war, Buck, remember?"

"I guess I'm still fighting my own."

The couch springs squeak, and before he can react, there are arms wrapped around him and it hits him at last, the warmth and feeling he hardly knew he still needed. Being touched like this reminds Bucky of just how pathetically starved of affection he is, because it feels amazing just to be held by someone, let alone his best friend. As if he knows this, Steve tightens his arms around him, and buries his face in his neck. Steve's hair is soft against his skin, and he smells _really_ good, like old-fashioned soap, the bourbon they've been drinking, and something more familiar.

Sense memories can be the most powerful, the doctors often tell Bucky, and he can see why.

"You sure I'm not gonna kill you?" says Bucky, lifting his head from Steve's shoulder, and he thinks how maybe it's the kind of thing that happy young man separated from him by decades and pain might have said to his friend.

(The worst part is that the tiniest corner of him _is_ actually considering the level of force it would take to snap Steve's neck - it's not that he would do it, it's just such an ingrained response that it's hard to shake off.)

Steve laughs, a deep rumbling that Bucky feels both against him and as a tug somewhere inside him; the space in Bucky's heart he didn't even know was there fills up just a little.

* * *

There is no way for Bucky to truly atone for his sins, but he's sure as hell going to try.

HYDRA is still out there, and somebody needs to stop them. Where Bucky can, he provides intel and is surprised by how many details he's managed to hold inside his damaged mind over the decades.

Romanoff and Barton come to him and ask for his help looking over some tactical simulations; with his extensive experience in stealth combat, they tell him they need his help with some tweaks. To his surprise, he finds the work both easy and diverting, and soon he is asked to join other projects in the building (heavily supervised, of course).

Most of the staff still eye him with a wary gaze; he is used to that, and perhaps they have good reason; each time he walks into a room he still immediately scans for perceived threats and estimates the force required to overpower the room's occupants.

Being in crowded places isn't easy - listening is difficult for Bucky at the best of times, with all the competing thoughts jostling for position in his head - but he perseveres with it. Steve is usually there, too, and when he is, Bucky uses Steve's voice and presence to ground him, keep him sane.

"I told you they'd come round," Steve murmurs in his ear while they're crowded round the holotable with Hill, Romanoff and Barton, cross-referencing locations of potential HYDRA storage facilities.

Bucky shoots him a warning look, trying not to notice the tingling in his skin caused by Steve's proximity to him.

Swallowing hard, Bucky points to a location with his gloved hand. "There, I think. Svalbard."

Hill rolls her eyes. "Oh, great. Have I told any of you how much I _hate_ the cold?" She pauses, as if realising what she's just just said.

Bucky feels them all turn to look at him, and fights back the redness threatening to creep up his face.

It's Steve who breaks the tension. "Really, Maria? You're gonna joke about the cold? Forgive me and Buck if we don't exactly well up with sympathy for you."

Everyone laughs, and Bucky tries not to show how pleased he is at being considered on a similar level to Steve, however briefly.

(He never has been, of course. Steve was always the better man: Bucky knew that from the time they were kids back in Brooklyn.)

* * *

"Hey man, how are you?" Sam opens the door, and his smile is genuine.

"Hi, Sam. It's good to see you," says Bucky, and he means it.

Bucky's been coming over to the apartment most days, and he liked Sam from the beginning: unlike some of the others, he didn't feel the need to constantly ask him about being the Winter Soldier. He didn't know the details of it, but Steve had alluded to the fact that Sam had some pretty tough stuff in his past, and somehow, Bucky felt like he understood him without saying a word.

"Steve around?" he asks, running a hand through his unkempt hair and yawning as he follows Sam down the hall.

(The nightmares had been the worst this week, and he was averaging two hours of sleep a night; the only thing that kept him going was knowing that he'd see Steve the next day.)

"He actually had to go back to headquarters - something about a mission he and Romanoff are scheduled to go on."

"Oh." Bucky schools his features into a neutral expression, trying to hide the knot of disappointment inside him and feeling pathetic - it isn't as though he _owns_ Steve or anything - but there's an uncomfortable ache inside whenever he isn't with him.

"Sorry," Sam says gently. "But I was just about to go for a run. Now, I know I can't exactly keep up with you super soldiers, but it's good motivation for me. Steve's been a little too busy to run lately." There's a knowing grin with Sam's last words, and Bucky knows he's referring to how much time he and Steve have been spending together lately.

He's never considered the fact that it might have been a little hard for Sam to compete with Steve's long-lost best friend back from the dead, but Sam has never shown any visible resentment. Not the first time, Bucky is incredibly grateful for Sam's easy-going nature, and finds himself warming to the man even further.

"So, how about it?" Sam is saying as he grabs his sneakers and pulls them on.

"Sure," Bucky finds himself saying. "And I wouldn't worry about keeping up with me - I'm out of shape."

He knows it's all relative, of course - by any standards he's still vastly fitter than the average person - but throughout his recovery, he hasn't had the chance for much exercise, and he misses it (HYDRA had electronically stimulated his muscles while he was in cryo to prevent atrophy, but that wasn't the same as real physical activity).

Sam lends him a pair of Steve's joggers and off they go.

Bucky discovers he wasn't kidding about being out of shape; he can run faster than Sam, but he half-collapses after his seventh mile and slumps down on the grass to wait for his companion to finish, heart pounding. His powerful body feels weak and soft, like he doesn't quite fit into it, and he decides right then that they should probably do this every day.

When Steve finds out about Sam and Bucky's daily running arrangement, he almost looks a little peeved; Bucky has to turn away to hide his smile.

* * *

Modern-day Brooklyn is definitely not like Bucky imagined. He's been to New York since, of course, but the memories are clinical, stark: street names and target information. He's endlessly fascinated, peering out of the car window at the once broken-down streets that are now lined with antique stores and cold-press coffee houses; it's hard to imagine him and Steve, side by side on these strange sidewalks.

They've taken Sam's car: Steve is driving, and Sam and Natasha are in the back; the two of them have plans to hit up the museums while Steve and Bucky take a look at their old neighbourhood.

"I'm still amazed you've never been here since the old days, Bucky. It's hipster central, I think you'd fit right in," Natasha says, leaning forward.

"It's not exactly a prime place to take a hit out on someone," Bucky tells her, frowning, and her grin is visible in the rearview mirror.

"She's right, you know. I think you fit right in with that hair, Buck," Steve says, teasing. Sure enough, Bucky notes, there _are_ a lot of young men on the streets with the same messy, not-quite-shoulder-length hairstyle as him.

Sam laughs. "You got style, Barnes. Accept it."

"I like it this way," he insists, a little defensively, and he does - it's a way to remind himself that he is someone new, that while he has echoes of the old Bucky, he is not him. Natasha already forced him into going to a hair salon to have his locks tidied up, claiming he looked like a vagabond, and he'd scowled the whole way through while secretly quite enjoying it.

Bucky has to agree with Steve that a lot of things in the modern world are a vast improvement on what he remembers; haircuts for men are one of them. Smiling to himself, he's reminded of the bruque Italian barber he and Steve used to go to back in the forties: it was cheap, but the guy pretty much did one hairstyle, a close-cropped cut that would never look quite right until it grew out a bit.

The others go off to do their sightseeing and he and Steve make their way further into the neighbourhood, stopping on the way for coffee and some unholy hybrid pastry known as a cronut: admittedly, it tastes good.

He's disappointed to find their old building's been demolished, but they go and look at the structure that stands in its place, all concrete and glass and sleek lines. Nothing like a home.

"God, we were poor," Steve says, his voice breaking on the words.

Bucky huffs out a breath and thinks of that awful winter when Steve was in and out of the hospital with his asthma, and there wasn't much work down the docks for Bucky so they would stuff newspaper down their clothes to keep in the heat. Sometimes, though they would have never admitted it to anyone, it got so cold that they would share the same bed, piling all the threadbare blankets on top of them. Steve's toes were always icy-cold when they pressed against Bucky's ankles in the bed.

"I know." Bucky puts his hand on Steve's shoulder, and they stand there quietly for a few moments, lost in memories of a simpler time.

"But I think we were pretty happy, too, kid," says Bucky with conviction, thinking about Steve's drawings pinned up everywhere to cover up the cracks in the walls, and the way the ill-fitting windows rattled in the icy winds of a New York winter.

"We were." Steve has a half-smile on his face, obviously absorbed in his own private memory.

"We had each other." Bucky takes Steve's hand and pulls him close, overwhelmed by the knowledge that despite everything, they're _here_ together. Steve's lips brush his neck - unintentionally or not, he can't tell - but he doesn't let go for a long time.

When the embrace ends, Bucky feels his heart ache with _wanting_ Steve.

The feeling's crept up on him over time. At first, he hardly knew what it was, on account of it having been so long, and it's never felt like this for him, anyway. He compares it to the pleasant twisting in his stomach he'd felt back in the old days when he asked a girl he really liked out on a date - except, all those infatuations never felt like this - but then the war came, and there were more important things to worry about. It's different, this stubborn, confusing ache sitting under his ribs, a bee-sting of feeling he has no context to interpret.

This is physical pain, as involuntary as breathing and just as hard to ignore.

* * *

Just when he dares to think everything is getting better, it suddenly gets so much worse. Steve goes away for a few days on a mission, and when he comes back, the notion of his friend's recovery has gone to hell in a handcart.

It starts innocuously enough, for Bucky. The flashbacks return, and when they do, they're worse than ever - inhabiting a world of cold-blooded violence for so long means it's always there, ready to return, and he relives it every night in his dreams.

The doctors warned him about this, and intellectually, he knows regression of symptoms is an inevitability of getting better.

Finding yourself again is a little like losing yourself in the process: he would know.

That part doesn't scare him so much. Bucky can handle the nightmares and the way his throat hurts afterwards from the screaming, the exhaustion, the constant palpitations and the spring-tight tension in his spine. He has handled worse.

The part he can't handle is the return of the Winter Soldier. It's not as if he's ever been gone, not really - he's always been part of the new Bucky, underneath him, hidden in layers of barely-healed scar tissue - but before, he could look at him objectively, could pity him.

Gradually, the Soldier reasserts his presence. He has enough memories now to remember who James Buchanan Barnes is, and enough understanding to assess the new situation he is in.

Everything seems to trigger him, whether it's the snap-snap-snap of shoes in a hallway that sound like his HYDRA utility boots on concrete, or the gun specs in the tactical data he reviews. He does the work that is expected of him, but avoids contact with others beyond that. Sometimes he sees them watching him, then looking away when he meets their eyes and they see the cold deadness behind them.

It's a week before his friend comes back from the mission and notices anything's up (Steve, but the Soldier doesn't like to say that name - he's not supposed to, and it hurts to say it).

His friend, the man he saved, his new handler, his mission; he's all those things. Bucky can separate the definitions of the words, but the Soldier understands that all these things are all wrapped up together. He would know.

He doesn't even have to break in to the house; the man invites him in. The Soldier smiles at him, and he smiles back, eyes lingering on the Soldier's form for just a shade too long. The Soldier thinks of the strange ache in his own body whenever the man looks at him, and now, he sees that he might want it, too. And he knows he could give him he what he wants, and he might enjoy it, because in the end he's nothing - just a body, flesh and metal stretched tight over bones.

But this isn't about what the Soldier wants or doesn't want. He has a mission to carry out, a duty to erase his past failures.

So when the man's not looking, he slips a shiny, bright kitchen knife up his sleeve. The weight of it, the cool of the metal against the skin of his flesh arm is a familiar comfort.

The Soldier waits, and he watches. There are cooking smells emanating from the kitchen; the man is making them dinner.

The friend brings out plates of spaghetti, and it smells good, and it makes the Soldier's mouth water, makes him swallow hard.

He looks up at the man holding the plates and it is hard to think clearly, beyond the pounding inside his chest and the sweat pooling at the small of his back. There's an openness and warmth and honesty about this face, that _stupid,_ trusting face that suddenly, the Soldier can't stand.

Before he can think, he's wrapped his metal arm round the other man's front, pinning his arms to him, sending the plate crashing to the floor, spaghetti sauce spattering the floor and their clothes.

"B-Buck? What?"

The man struggles in his grasp; it is a great effort to hold him. He stretches his metal fingers, tries to reach up his other sleeve for the knife while the man writhes against him, trying to get free. He can feel the handle, but he can't take it out.

The Soldier wants to take it out, but there's Bucky, too, still in there, and he _can't._

"No," the Soldier growls out between gritted teeth, every word an effort to speak.

Bucky releases his grip on Steve and backs away, panting. He pulls the knife from his sleeve and throws it away in disgust, making a clang on the polished hardwood. Steve follows the weapon with his eyes, and Bucky catches the look of revulsion and horror on the face of his old friend.

Time slows down. Bucky can't breathe, can't speak, can't think.

Then Steve puts his face in his hands, makes a choking sound and says, "God, Bucky, what did they do to you?" His face is set, and it's obvious he's using all of his control not to cry.

And then his control is not enough, and he does cry, and with watching that pain, something snaps inside Bucky, that gossamer-thin hope he's kept close all this time, that he could be Steve's friend, his Bucky (his something-more-than-a-friend).

"Please, Bucky." It's so quiet, he hardly hears it at first. It's Steve, slumped on his knees by the table, hands outstretched as if offering himself up in supplication.

He misunderstands at first, backing away, but then Steve says it again.

 _"Please."_

So Bucky kneels down beside Steve and folds him into his arms and lets him sob quietly and fist his hands in his hair, in amongst the broken china and long-forgotten remains of their dinner.

(Bucky remembers when they were little, he was always the crier, sniffling over a scraped knee and later, over failed romances - though he'd never admit that part if Steve asked. But no matter how badly he was hurt or how sick he was, Steve almost never cried _._ )

When Steve has stopped crying, Bucky gets up and walks back out of the apartment. It's raining, and his thin shirt is soaked through in seconds, and he's shaking, holding tension stiffly in his shoulders, from wanting to go back up those stairs and be with Steve.

 _No._ He doesn't deserve Steve, not now.

Sam will be home soon, and he will pick up the pieces - he's better at it, anyway. Steve needs someone whole, with sunshine and warmth and all the things Bucky so desperately wants to be for him.

Bucky calls Natasha and tells her he wants to go back to the room with the clear glass walls.

* * *

They don't sedate him this time, but there's more therapy.

He talks a lot, relives his awful act against Steve over and over, and it's agony. The Soldier sometimes comes back, but the doctors tell him that the more he accepts his presence, the less power the Soldier has over him, and he starts to see that's true.

The routines are not the same; he doesn't get his food on trays this time, or get to sit in bed all day. They make him get up, eat in an adjoining room off a real plate, conscious of not wanting to take his choices away by giving him strict mealtimes to adhere to.

He is free to come and go as he pleases.

(He doesn't go anywhere; he's afraid to.)

There's exercise equipment in another adjoining room - Stark's funding apparently buys this facility limitless state-of-the-art tech - and sometimes he uses it; physical activity helps quiet the roaring in his head.

Tony Stark comes to see him for the first time, and despite Bucky's fears, seems to harbour no particular feeling toward him besides curiosity; the man sets Bucky's teeth on edge from the beginning, but he knows that he has him to thank, too.

Natasha visits, and sometimes Sam, too, and he's grateful for that (he kindly brings the games console from Bucky's quarters and it's a welcome distraction, even if Natasha beats them both every time at _MarioKart_ ).

He wants to ask Sam about Steve, but he doesn't feel he has the right to, and Sam is delicate enough not to mention it.

It's been weeks when he tells the doctors "I want to get out of here." They don't stand in his way.

"Don't." Steve holds up a hand. "Don't say you're sorry." His solid bulk is blocking the apartment doorway.

Bucky's insides twist, and though it's a good day for him, instantly he feels small and weak and pathetic all over again - like his handlers always said he was - but Steve hasn't finished talking yet.

He opens the door and tells Bucky fiercely, "You _never_ have to apologise for who you are again."

There's a pause, and Bucky realises he's being invited in - he can hardly dare to believe that this is happening, but he's gonna go with it, just the same.

He can hear soft music coming from Sam's room as they enter the apartment, and is immensely grateful that there's someone else there to keep Steve safe.

Steve sits on one of the hard kitchen chairs and Bucky stands awkwardly nearby, not sure what to do. His heart hammers in his chest, and all he can focus on is what the next move might be, what the right behaviour is that he should display for either reward or punishment.

"I never read all of the details in your KGB file. I couldn't, and that's my failing." Steve's voice catches, and Bucky balls his metal hand into a fist, fighting the urge to step into Steve's space and throw his arms around him (the last thing he needs is for touching Steve to become some sort of freakish programmed response, _no_ _.)_

"When I read about the things they did, the way they programmed you...sorry, I know it's even harder for you to hear."

"It's okay," says Bucky automatically, keeping his face neutral, but then Steve looks up at him and gives him that look he remembers, that who-are-you-kidding-you-little-punk look, and he shakes his head, remembering that he shouldn't pretend what happened to him was _okay_ in any sense of the word.

They don't talk much more that night. Bucky tells him a little - as much as he can manage, and more than he's ever told anyone apart from the psychologists back at the complex. He tells Steve about how they used to hurt him in ways that that wouldn't disable their Asset for the mission, using instruments of maximum pain with minimal surface damage, the way they once kept him awake for nearly ten days straight, just to see what he would do.

The part he is afraid to tell Steve, but he does anyway, is about the kindness; after they wrecked him, every time, his handlers spoke softly and they were kind. Sometimes, he didn't fear his mistakes so much, because after the punishment, they _cared._ _  
_

When he tells him that part, Steve is silent, but the tears are rolling down his cheeks.

Afterwards, Bucky feels drained and empty, and when Steve tells him to stay and tucks him up on the sofa with a blanket, he's too exhausted to resist.

He comes awake sometime past midnight with a scream choked in his throat, thinking for one moment that he's back there in the dark place, and he can hear Steve murmuring something to Sam down the hall before he rushes in.

Steve is breathing heavily, eyes wide with fear until he sees for himself that his friend's okay. He takes one look at Bucky and offers a hand.

"C'mon. It'll be like old times. We'll pile up the blankets on the bed, and you can keep me warm."

Trembling, Bucky nods and says weakly, "Just as long as you keep those damn freezing toes away from my ankles."

He lets Steve lead him to his bedroom and they settle on the bed, trying to get comfortable.

Bucky thinks really he should be afraid of hurting Steve if he has another nightmare, but then Steve wraps his body around him and they fit together and he's warm, and he stops worrying.

Dimly, he thinks of their old apartment, and the way Steve's skinny frame would fit against his skin on those nights when it was really cold, or Steve was sick. Bucky would sleep with one arm thrown over Steve so he could feel that little bird-boned chest and the beat of his heart underneath (and sometimes, Bucky would wake in the middle of the night, hard and panting, and would have to move himself away from Steve, slowly and carefully so he wouldn't notice).

Then comes sleep, deeper and more restful than he's known in so long.

(At the time, he was too young and stupid and afraid to tell Steve that those nights they slept in that rickety, narrow bed were his favourite nights of all.)

* * *

"Here." Sam puts the clear plastic cup with a straw in front of him. It's some kind of sludgy green juice, and Bucky frowns. It's their regular post-run café visit, and Bucky has begun to look forward to it; it's a time where he doesn't have to worry about all the things inside his head jostling for attention.

"What's that?" he asks, eyeing the drink suspiciously, already mentally checking his knowledge of various poisons and contaminants.

Sam grins and sinks down in the café chair opposite Bucky, taking a slurp of his own identical beverage. "Wheatgrass cranberry bomb. Antioxidants, nutrients, everything the body needs after exercise."

Bucky pushes his sweaty hair out of his eyes with a gloved hand and picks up the cup, trying not to listen to the teenage girls on the next table discussing what the deal was with that hot guy who always went running in a long-sleeved t-shirt and gloves even in the sweltering summer heat.

He tries the drink, discovering that it's actually pretty good.

Sam laughs, triumph glinting in his eyes. "You see! I swear, I am converting you and Rogers to all the delights the twentieth century has to offer."

Bucky smiles, and it's his real smile, not that fake, scared mask that showed all his teeth, back when he had to smile or die.

When he has time in between his tactical consults, he's been helping Sam at the VA - he doesn't join in with sessions, no way - but he helps with the set-up and pack-up, making sure the refreshments are ready and so on. It's a way for him to feel useful again, for him to use skills he acquired as Bucky Barnes, not as the Winter Soldier.

One day, Bucky sometimes thinks, maybe he'll tell his story to them, to the world. Just not today.

Steve's calendar is full of Avengers-iniative missions and more off-the-books HYDRA cleanup operations; sometimes when he comes back from those, Bucky can see the horror in his eyes and he knows, and he doesn't have to say anything, because for Steve, Bucky knowing is enough.

Bucky's room in that long corridor beneath the hospital floor now lies empty. It wasn't something Steve and he ever talked about, but Bucky started spending his nights in Steve's bed, and Steve never exactly asked him to move in, but he didn't exactly _not,_ either.

And therein lies the problem. With good sleep and healing, Bucky's longing for his best friend has only deepened. Being next to Steve every night, feeling the defined muscles of his body wrapped around him and listening to his breathing, touching the exposed parts of his skin while wanting to touch so much more - it's a pain of a different kind, one that leaves him achingly hard and trying to shift away from Steve surreptitiously, just like the old days.

"Bucky?" Sam is staring at him curiously, and Bucky gets the unpleasant sense, like cold water pouring down his spine, that the perceptive bastard knows _exactly_ what he's thinking about.

"Let's just take these drinks to go, yeah?" Bucky says quickly, trying to ignore the smug way Sam's grinning at him.

Minutes later, Bucky's in the shower, flesh hand pressed up against the tiles while his metal fingers work at his cock. He's that wound up that it's less than ten pulls before he comes apart, trying not to murmur Steve's name.

* * *

Bucky still hates the cold, and that's one of the things he dislikes about Steve's room with the air conditioning set high; super soldiers run hot, but Bucky hasn't felt properly warm in years. They've had to find a compromise, with Bucky putting on an extra layer and Steve raising the thermostat slightly.

That's how it gets to be a late July evening; Bucky is sitting cross-legged on Steve's bed reading a book on Cold War history - and trying not to shudder, though it's interesting, because in the dark shadows between those pages, sometimes, there's him - all wrapped up two t-shirts and a oversized sweater.

Steve is settled in the chair by the door sketching (on his days off, that's what he likes to do most), lips pursed in concentration while his pencil moves over the page like a blur.

Bucky's given up the pretense that he's still reading; he shuts the book and leans forward on his knees.

"What're you drawing?"

"It's not finished," Steve tells him curtly, and closes the sketchbook before Bucky has a chance to glimpse what's inside.

"Now that's hardly fair, is it, Stevie?" Bucky says, flashing him the pleading look that always used to get him that second date with girls.

Steve smiles gently at the use of his old nickname; Bucky can't remember when he started using it again, but sometimes he does, and it feels great, that something so simple can connect past and future like that.

"I was going to get a lemonade," says Steve, rising from the chair. "Want anything?"

Bucky considers; it's still a little tiring, choosing every time he wants something to eat or drink, but he's getting used to it. "A coke, I guess."

"Coming up." Steve pads softly out of the room, humming to himself.

He knows he shouldn't. But that blue cloth cover on that sketchbook is calling to him with its softness and the promise of secrets inside, and before he can stop himself he's slid off the end of the bed and reached out to pick it up.

He opens it, and on the first page, sees a drawing of his arm, an unfinished half-sketch, but he can see the star emblazoned on it and the beginnings of the metal plates. His arm.

Bucky sucks in a breath and keeps turning the pages.

There's a sketch of a patient in a hospital bed with blankets are pulled up to his neck, fast asleep. And then one of a metal hand clasped in a flesh one, a concrete-and-glass apartment building visible just beyond their joined hands. More drawings of the same man, looking away and occasionally, smiling - and these ones hit just a bit too close, because Steve can draw too well and the numb eyes are the same ones Bucky sees looking back at him in the mirror - and in profile, his long hair pulled up with an elastic, a book propped in his hand.

They're all him. Steve has filled damn near an entire sketchbook with drawings of Bucky, his pencil lingering over every line and curve of _him_. _  
_

Bucky doesn't know what to do, and his heart is thumping, not catching up with his head as he stares at the book.

Steve's already coming in with the drinks and Bucky tries to put the book back quickly, but it's too late, and Steve sees. With his back to him, Steve puts the drinks on the desk; he doesn't turn around for a second.

"Bucky," he says, a flush creeping up his neck. "You weren't supposed to look in there. It's just my way of processing things, it's -" Steve's sentence tails off, unfinished.

In all that's happened, Bucky's forgotten how goddamn adorable Steve Rogers is when he can't think of an excuse.

Bucky shoves the book back on the chair, summons up the ghost of that old confidence he still remembers and goes right over there and kisses Steve, warm and gentle and just right, the way he's always imagined. And then Steve kisses back and suddenly, it isn't warm and gentle. For all his delicate sensibilities, the way Steve kisses is sheer heat, all teeth and tongue and roughness as he pulls Bucky closer.

"So," Bucky says a moment later, slightly dazed with his hands on Steve's waist, and Steve has a hand in Bucky's hair and one drifting down his back. "I wasn't wrong, then?"

Steve laughs and starts to say, "Oh shut up, you smug son of a -" Bucky doesn't let him finish, kissing him again.

Then, somehow, their clothes are on the floor and he's got Steve sprawled out naked in front of him on the bed with a hard cock tilting towards his stomach that's just begging for him to touch, taste, _anything.  
_

Bucky leans down for another kiss, and Steve eagerly reciprocates, sinking teeth into his bottom lip in a way that sends a pulse straight to Bucky's cock.

And in an instant, all the breath's knocked from Bucky, because there's a hand wrapped around his cock, and it's Steve, working gentle fingers over the length of him. He gasps, lost in how unbelievably good it feels before he remembers that this isn't the way he wants it to go.

"Always so impatient, Steve," Bucky tells him, gently pulling the hand away even while his cock throbs and protests at the lack of contact. "The way this always works in my head, I get to have you first."

"Oh, fuck," Steve says upon hearing that, hair mussed from the way Bucky's fingers have been carding through it, his pupils blown from wanting - half-undone already, and God, though there are reasons why they never did this before, Bucky can't think of a single one right now.

Shifting further down the bed into a more comfortable position, Bucky runs his tongue over the hollow of Steve's hipbone, tasting the salt-sweat tang of skin and _Steve_ , unable to stop himself smiling when Steve moans unashamedly - the best sound he's ever heard. He can't resist a little more teasing, mouthing at all the sensitive places over Steve's stomach and thighs and laying gentle bites as he goes.

"Oh God, Buck, please," Steve is saying, chest rising and falling with each heavy, heated breath, and Bucky isn't about to wait any longer to get his mouth on that beautiful cock.

Metal hand propping him up on the sheets, Bucky bends down and wraps his flesh hand round Steve's cock at the same time he darts out his tongue, licking around the head.

Steve's answering groan goes straight to Bucky's cock - and _fuck,_ he might not even last through this - and his hips cant slightly, wanting more.

But Bucky's focus is soon elsewhere, because he slides his mouth over spit-slick skin, all the way until he's taken Steve right down to where his hand's gripping him, and Steve is gasping out a breath, which means he's taken him by surprise, and Bucky loves the thought of that.

Tracing the lines of Steve's cock with his tongue, he applies every trick he has up his sleeve to making this man fall apart. Steve reaches down to fist a hand in Bucky's hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, but Bucky doesn't mind, and he doesn't stop, not for a second.

Steve tastes bitter-salty, like his skin but a little sharper, and fuck if Bucky get can't enough of it, just like he can't enough of the way Steve's moaning and tensing beneath him, so close he can feel it -

Bucky flicks his tongue over the head and that's it; Steve's spilling into his mouth with a desperate mutter of "Bucky, God, yeah," and Bucky's swallowing back all of him, and he doesn't stop, not for a second, at least not until Steve is wrecked and shaking with the aftershocks.

Pulling back with a wet pop as his mouth releases Steve, Bucky grins at him in a way that he's hoping is slightly wicked, and presses a final kiss to Steve's stomach that makes him shudder.

"You are..." Steve tries to say, and can't find the words, but Bucky finds them for him and crawls up the bed to kiss him, open-mouthed and messy and tasting of him, and if Steve's shocked at that, he isn't showing it. He kisses him with abandon, running his fingers through Bucky's hair like he likes the length of it.

Lifting his head, Steve moves to the side of Bucky and presses a kiss to his neck: it's tender, just like the way his hands move to trace the planes of Bucky's chest, to linger over the scar tissue where the metal joins to his skin. Steve's hands on his skin have a confidence Bucky doesn't quite remember - not that he ever touched him like this - but it's just another part of the newness between them, of rediscovering each other after all the changes the years have wrought on them.

"Steve, I'm close already, it won't take -" Bucky barely manages to say, before Steve shuts him up with a kiss and bite to his lip that promises a lot more.

Just then, Bucky's cock throbs painfully, reminding him he's been holding off for ages, but Steve's already sliding fingers down his stomach and a half-second later, there's a sure, determined hand wrapped around his cock. He gasps; the Steve in his dreams didn't touch like this, but that only makes it better.

Bucky clutches at the sheets, trying not to close his eyes, because he wants to look at Steve for this, but then Steve starts to move his hand in a slow, steady rhythm and he's almost gone already, because it feels good in a way he could have hardly imagined; a thread of silvery heat drawing up his spine and pulling tauter with every second that passes.

"Please, Steve," he says with a groan, shifting his hips into the touch, and they both know he's asking for more. Steve obliges, pressing his thumb to head of Bucky's cock, spreading some of the slickness there and moving to swift, smooth strokes that have Bucky breathing quick, uneven breaths and digging both his hands into the sheets (he's vaguely aware to watch the pressure of the metal one on the mattress; breaking Steve's bed is not part of the deal).

Steve's eyes never leave Bucky's skin while his hand moves over his cock - like he doesn't want to miss a second of this - and Bucky is biting his lip, trying to keep quiet, tensing and trembling against Steve. Then Bucky pants out a long breath, Steve twists his wrist and just like that, Bucky comes, shattering and spilling himself all over Steve's hand and his stomach.

Slowly unclenching his hands from the sheets, Bucky laughs shakily and says, "Christ, Rogers, where'd you learn to do that?"

Steve just grins and wipes his come-sticky hand on the dark sheets in an entirely un-Steve way, and Bucky thinks he might love this side of Steve (maybe all the sides of Steve, really, but he isn't quite sure he can say that right now without hyperventilating). He grabs a tissue from the nightstand and cleans off Bucky's stomach with gentle strokes.

Looking up, Bucky takes in the sight of Steve - this relaxed, languid Steve, with loose limbs and kiss-bruised lips, and _he_ did this to him - and isn't surprised when Steve leans in for one more kiss. It's sweeter and softer than before, with so much feeling behind it, and it presses at that soft ache inside Bucky.

There's a fierceness in Steve's eyes when he pulls back and says, "Just think, we could have been doing this all those years ago."

"You mean, you -?" Bucky can hardly make sense of the implication - it's too much, to think that after all the effort he made to conceal the fact he was in love with his best friend, Steve knew the whole time.

"Oh, come off it, Buck. You think I didn't realise, all those times when we were younger and I'd wake up with your hard-on pressed into my back?"

For once, it's Bucky's turn to blush, warmth rising up his face and neck. "I could do with that coke now, I think."

They don't need to say much else that night. Bucky throws an arm over Steve and pulls him close against him just like the old days, except they're a little more naked than the old days - and it doesn't feel strange at all.

Already, that funny, stubborn ache in Bucky's chest feels different; better, somehow, like his heart's filling up with all the pieces of Steve that he missed out on.

* * *

Bucky runs his hands over his new tactical suit - it's black, and more or less similar to what he wore with HYDRA, except for the subtle 'A' logo embroidered into the front. The thick-weave fabric and Kevlar fits to his skin in a way he remembers, and something about it feels like _him_ ; the real him, not James Buchanan Barnes or the Winter Soldier.

He never expected to be cleared for missions; it's more than he dared to hope for, to feel useful like this again. And this time, it's his choice, because he's never _not_ going to be the Winter Soldier, and he might as well use his talents for good.

"Looking great there, My Chemical Romance. The girls are gonna weep over your beauty at the concert." Bucky grits his teeth at Tony's aside - he gets the reference, yes, and no, he doesn't find it funny (and there's no way he's going to tell Tony that he briefly considered using the black war paint around his eyes).

Steve comes in and meets Bucky's eye for half a second, and Bucky finds himself smiling this goofy smile he remembers; it's the way one stupid, cocky kid smiled at his best pal, side-by-side on a windy Brooklyn street.

Barton follows close behind and exchanges a knowing look with Tony.

"Well, it's about time," says Natasha to no-one in particular, not looking up from the mission briefing on her tablet.

"Right?" says Tony, winking at Steve, who turns pink - and yeah, Bucky _is_ smirking a little bit on the inside, because Stevie was always so easy to embarrass. "All that pining was killing me."

"Buckle up, kid," Steve murmurs in Bucky's ear, threading warm fingers between his metal ones.

Bucky smiles, daring to hope.


End file.
